Sony broke new ground when it introduced the Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 in 2012 and shook up the compact camera market. The pocket-sized shooter sported a 1-inch sensor, more than twice the size of the 1/1.7-inch sensors that were used in other premium compacts. The RX100 II, which added improved low light performance, Wi-Fi, and support for an optional add-on EVF, followed the next year.

The latest model, the RX100 III, is a more drastic revision than its predecessor, and at $800 is the most expensive camera in the compact lineup to date.

The first two entries in the series shared the same 28-100mm f/1.8-4.9 (full-frame equivalent) zoom lens, which captured a heck of a lot of light at its widest angle, but was comparatively dim when zoomed all the way in. The RX100 III drops it in favor of a 24-70mm f/1.8-2.8 lens, which has a shorter zoom ratio, but covers a wider angle and gathers more light at its telephoto extreme. The lens has a built-in ND filter, which can be activated to cut out three stops of light, which will let you shoot at a very wide aperture for shallow depth of field under bright light. The image sensor is still a 20-megapixel BSI CMOS design, but it leverages the same image processor and full pixel readout video recording that was introduced in the RX10 superzoom.

The hot shoe that was introduced in the RX100 II is gone. Instead Sony has managed to squeeze a pop-up electronic viewfinder into the svelte body. It's an OLED panel that's necessarily small, but still quite sharp to my eye. I really enjoy shooting with an eye-level finder, and while we're seeing more EVFs in compact cameras, this is the best I've seen in such a small package. It's markedly more pleasant to use when compared with the tiny EVFs in the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS40 and Nikon Coolpix P7800.

The rear LCD is hinged, and can now face all the way forward for selfies. Even with the changes, the RX100 III has the same feel and handling characteristics of the earlier models in the series, and enjoys a huge leg up in terms of image quality when compared with cameras of similar size. Sony is still the only company to put a sensor this big and a zoom lens into a pocket-friendly body.

I got the chance to give the RX100 III a test drive at a recent Sony shooting event. I used the camera to shoot some portraits of a jazz band and of the cast of Fuerza Bruta. I also carried the RX100 during a performance of that show, which is a huge acrobatic theatrical number with very intense changes in lighting and lots of fast action. I used it primarily at its widest angle during that performance, as I was also carrying the Alpha 7S with a 70-200mm zoom lens attached.

Despite the challenging light, I was really happy with the images that the RX100 III can capture. I pushed it to its ISO 12800 setting when shooting jazz by candlelight, and while the detail wasn't on the same level as you'd expect from an APS-C or full-frame sensor, the resulting images were better than you could expect from a pocket camera with a standard sensor. I still wouldn't recommend pushing the RX100 III that far if you can help it, but it's been my experience with other cameras in the RX series that you can capture printable images at ISO 6400.

I was also quite happy with the RX100 III's burst shooting capability. I had the camera set to record Raw+JPG, and even in that mode it can shoot at 10 frames per second, and it can keep that pace up for about 25 shots. The burst shooting capability left me with a lot of images to offload from my card at the end of the evening, but it was definitely a help for such challenging, fast-moving action. The only real downside is that, even when using a fast 95MBps memory card, it takes about 20 seconds to clear all of those images from the buffer to the card.

You can start to power off the camera during that duration, but its lens won't retract until everything is written to the card. I was doing my best to slip the camera into my shirt pocket between bursts so I could switch to the other body I was carrying, but the delay in the lens retraction got in my way. That's something that Sony could fix with a firmware update if it's an issue for enough people. Another quirk that I'd like to see addressed is also related to powering the RX100 down. If you are using the EVF, lowering it into the body turns the camera off. That's a little weird to me, because there are times where I'd like to tuck the EVF away and continue to shoot using the rear LCD.

I'm still working through the images I shot with the RX100 III, and we've yet to put the camera through the normal battery of lab tests that go along with a full review. That should follow within the next few weeks. The camera is available for purchase now, and is priced at $799.99.

Senior digital camera analyst for the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team, Jim Fisher is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he concentrated on documentary video production. Jim's interest in photography really took off when he borrowed his father's Hasselblad 500C and light meter in 2007. He honed his writing skills at retailer B&H Photo, where he wrote thousands upon thousands of product descriptions, blog posts, and reviews. Since then he's shot with hundreds of camera models, ranging from pocket point-and-shoots to medium format...
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